Essays Catholic and Critical
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Essays Catholic and Critical

By George P. Schner, SJ

Mark A. Husbands, Philip G. Ziegler, Philip G. Ziegler

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eBook - ePub

Essays Catholic and Critical

By George P. Schner, SJ

Mark A. Husbands, Philip G. Ziegler, Philip G. Ziegler

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About This Book

This book presents the most significant work of the highly esteemed contemporary theologian George Schner, who died in 2000. Gathering together his writing in the areas of theology and the philosophy of religion, it offers a distinct contribution to our understanding of the prospects and perils of undertaking theology in the Christian tradition at the present juncture. Engaging key texts in philosophy of religion from the modern period, recent official Roman Catholic teaching related to the basis and doing of theology, and the work of key representatives of the so-called 'Yale School' of post-liberal theology, the essays collected here represent acute and historically informed judgment upon the problematique of the practice of contemporary theology. Drawing together a substantial body of work of recognized intellectual scope, philosophical rigour and theological richness, this volume provides invaluable insight into key questions regarding theological method, the importance of modern philosophy of religion, the nature of theological discourse and contemporary Catholic theological reflection.

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Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2017
ISBN
9781351939225
Subtopic
Religion
Edition
1

PART I
ENGAGING THE CATHOLIC TRADITION

Chapter 1

‘New Ways of Speaking with Love and Mercy’ : Veritatis Splendor and the Teaching Responsibility of the Church in our Times


Introduction: Why Teaching?

Paul, Augustine and Veritatis Splendor

‘To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good’, writes St Paul in his first letter to the church at Corinth. His discussion of the gifts of the Spirit is in response to the complex and confused situation he had heard about there. He exercises his responsibility by providing the Corinthians with an account of what authentic life in Christ entails not by writing a gospel, but by applying the basic rule of faith to the particular problems of that particular church.1 In his discourse on the gifts of the Spirit he lists as foremost the establishment by God of apostles, prophets and teachers within the Church, all united by one source and one goal. Thus, like all the gifts of the Spirit, the charism of teaching in its many forms carries with it responsibility and authority because of its divine origin and goal. Paul discusses at length the challenge of using the gifts of the Spirit well, but not without mention of the joy and excitement which pervades their exercise.
The survival and development of every culture and, by analogy, of every religion depends in very important ways on the forms of education through which it lives. Critical reflection on the activities and institutions which form an educational system has been a constant part of our Christian heritage. It is appropriate to remember for a moment, as we place ourselves in this tradition of reflection, that St Augustine in his early writings has a conversation with his son on the subject of teaching and, even more helpfully, considers the matter in terms of what it means for us to speak, to have a conversation, to discourse.2 How we understand discourse to function and what we think it is ultimately about determine both the way we teach and the actual content of what we teach. That the aim of speaking is teaching or remembrance is a profound observation on Augustine’s part. That the aim of Christian teaching is to set forth Christ, who is himself the greatest teacher, is equally profound. While I may take exception to Augustine’s basic theory of language, I do subscribe to his doctrine of the Holy Spirit, who must speak internally to us (whatever problems that metaphor might have) as we externally carry on that discourse which is the Christian way of life.
This brings me to the title of my remarks, ‘new ways of speaking with love and mercy’. These words are taken from the third paragraph of the recent encyclical Veritatis Splendor.3 In the initial paragraphs, the authors of the encyclical offer general remarks about the character and importance of teaching in the Church, asserting, as have Paul and Augustine, that the answer to all our questions, both religious and moral, is not simply given by Jesus, but is Jesus Christ himself (§2). In the third chapter, the text explicitly relates the priority of Jesus to the teaching itself: the source of the Church’s educative power is ‘not so much in doctrinal statements and pastoral appeals to vigilance, as in constantly looking to the Lord Jesus’ (§85). We do not have to cast about looking for or inventing what needs to be said. Rather, it has been said, it has been given to us, by the mercy of God and for the renewal of our minds, as Paul puts it in Rom. 12:1-2. It is this basic conviction which will guide my reading of this document. I will not, however, focus primarily on the content of its teaching, but rather on the path it takes through reflection on five modes of teaching. Whether intentionally or not, the text correctly passes through a range of activities which can adequately address the need for ‘examining the signs of the times and interpreting them in the light of the gospel’ (§2).
These teaching activities have requirements in keeping with their use within Christianity, and to repeat my first two important presumptions: (1) teaching is essential to the self-maintenance of Christianity and (2) what is being taught is a person, Jesus. The inner requirements of the five kinds of teaching are the origin and goal of that teaching. These will then be used to ask some general questions about the content of the encyclical’s claims and assertions. In this way, I hope to show how it both succeeds and fails in being itself a new way of speaking with love and mercy – that is, a form of authoritative and responsible teaching, offered with joy and excitement, rooted in Jesus Christ and undertaken for the betterment of the Church today.

‘Lord to Whom Shall we Go? You Have the Words of Eternal Life ‘ (John 6:68)

As with prophecy and witness, teaching is grounded in mystery. I don’t say this to ‘mystify’ what we are discussing, but rather to place my remarks in the context appropriate to a consideration of teaching as a work of the Church. The prophet feels consumed by the need ‘to speak the word of the Lord’ and the apostle who is sent ‘to preach good news to the poor’ is driven by compassion to labour in service. So, likewise, the teacher is drawn and urged by something we all too easily call ‘the truth’, to interpret and explain, to elicit and guide, to train and foster, to question and answer. As with the prophet and apostle, the Christian teacher is drawn by a person, not by abstract truth. That person is God made manifest, but also God still hidden, and so, as does the prophet and apostle, the Christian as teacher is regularly led into silence, a reflective and critical silence.
Why consider new ways of speaking in particular? Why is discourse primary? It is not the case that words are somehow better or more important than actions or experience. All three make up the complexity of life; all three are simultaneously present; all three are important parts of teaching and learning. Yet the marvel of language, considered as discourse and ultimately as conversation, is its reality as the medium – that is, the ‘place where’ human life is carried on. Without discourse, teaching would be impossible. It seems obvious, but that is precisely its trouble: it is all too much taken for granted.4 Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel provides us with a context for reflection on the importance of discourse. The passage is reminding us of the basic truth we have already noted: Jesus gives life, and it uses the metaphor of bread to get the point across; Jesus is bread from heaven, our daily bread, our sustenance. But, importantly, that bread is to be understood as Jesus’ revelatory words – words which shape and make the community what it is. Some disciples choose to leave Jesus’ company, not because the bread is stale, but because what Jesus says (and is) ‘is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’ (John 6:60). Staying in the conversation has never been easy, but the conversation is the community. Now, what makes the conversation that is the Church today so difficult?

Why Speaking?

The Contestation of Authority and Experience

In the contemporary Catholic Church, especially in North America though surely not exclusively so, we tend to find a typical dynamic between individuals or groups which resolves itself into what I call the contestation of authority and experience.5 An appeal to authority or experience is made in order to give the reason for believing or not believing something, doing or not doing something, agreeing or not agreeing with someone or some group. This opposition of experience and authority came about as a result of changes which occurred in the self-description of Christians and the designation by others of what it is we do when we live as such. This now common-sense opposition had to be invented. It took centuries for that to happen, and it is taking decades to sort out what is appropriate and accurate criticism of that which we have inherited in this regard.
To find ourselves caught up in the problematic opposition of experience and authority is to be held captive not only to a particular way of understanding what it means to be human, but also to a particular way of understanding God and the world. Put simply, the opposition of authority and experience is inadequate to both Christianity and responsible teaching. That is not to say that people do not find it the immediately available way to talk about what they find happening to themselves. Neither is it to say that the opposition of authority and experience might not actually result in life-giving events. But the very shape of the contestation does not enable discourse, especially conversation.
Church authorities speak and the faithful say that they are out of touch with their experience. I do not doubt that in some cases they are. The next move is the important one: on the one side they say, ‘Since what you say is not my experience, it is not authoritative’; on the other side they say, ‘Since what you say is not in keeping with authority, it is not authentic experience’. But the tables can easily be turned. The appeal to experience is, in fact, an appeal to authority: ‘my experience’ authorizes (that is, gives authority) to me, is the basis on which I choose what to do and say. And the appeal to authority is, in fact, an appeal to experience: you must do as I say because what I tell you is what I know (that is, what I experience) to be true, or, more broadly, I merely remind you of what has always been true (that is, the common accumulated experience, now wisdom, of the community). Sometimes ‘experience’ is discounted because it is not immediate, being called ‘ideological’. Or experience is discounted because it does not issue from the ‘correct’ social location. The same, of course, might be said of authority.
There are deep truths behind this contestation of two opposing forms of justification and their mutual misunderstanding. Both continuity and inventiveness are essential functions of identity. To discover what they have in common, as deep beliefs and commitments, would be to discover the tasks to be done if groups and individuals are not to become isolated and sick – in a very real sense unhealthy -within the Church. I think it has a great deal to do with retrieving responsible teaching and learning in the Church.
This opposition of authority and experience also depends on other kinds of distortion within the Church. Let me consider two other confusions it tends to carry with it, so as to make this rather large problem a bit clearer, even if more complex.

The Search for Propositional Truths

Often associated with the appeal to authority is the presumption that what is needed ~ or what must be avoided at all costs – are definitive statements about the way things are. Put in a technical fashion: discourse based on authority often claims to speak universal and irreformable truths in propositional form which tell us just the way things are, something it presumes everybody needs. A preoccupation with universal truths has both a philosophical and psychosociological story behind it. The philosophical one is very ancient, though its present stage is related to particular notions developed as early as the sixteenth century and significantly developed at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. It was at that time that the present contestation of authority and experience, especially as it relates to Christianity, got its particular shape.6 It is the unfortunate limitation to a preoccupation by authority with statements of universal truth that is symptomatic. That truth must be talked about is certain; that truth is foundational, authoritative, even universal in some sense, is also the case. That universal propositions about it are not what we are after is equally certain. Veritatis Splendor nods in this direction when it notes in §29 that it does not intend to ‘impose upon the faithful any particular theological system, still less a philosophical one’. If the document had carried out this promise, it might fare better as a teaching document.
To teach universal propositional truth is not sufficient for a religion such as Christianity, and certainly is not its primary concern. Neither is the passing on of information in the form of propositional truths the heart of responsible teaching. New life in Christ is not essentially gaining new information which can be stated in universal propositions. As a matter of fact, the rudimentary discourse about Christianity is the telling of a very specific story: the story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection; of his coming from God and going back to God; of the continuity between creation and salvation; and of the sending of the Holy Spirit to gather us all up into Christ and return us home to God, This large rudimentary truth is cast m particularity, in history, in details which it is impossible to render into so-called universal truths. That is not to say that the matter of universality or of truth is to be set aside or lost. Rather, it has to do with where or how the universality and the truth is to be found and limited.

The Search for Authenticating Experience

We have an analogous set of problems associated with the appeal to experience. Experience is named unique and authenticating, which is a way of speaking about universality which is actually radical individuality. It is a universal of one, in which that towards which all turns as one (to play on the etymology of Universum,‘a turn to’ or ‘as one’) is not truth found beyond ourselves, but found in the self metaphorically thought of as an ‘inside’ which has an ‘outside’.7 Once again there is both a philosophical and a psychosociological story behind the origins and developments of the shape of this appeal and preoccupation with experience as authenticating. It can develop into a way of life in which novelty is considered closer to the nature of truth than repetition and boredom is to be feared far more than discontinuity. However, the appeal to experience does alert us to what is called the self-involving character of the religious use of language, and to the role of critique which such appeals can play. Nonetheless, the appeal to authority is also self-involving and also functions as critique. Though it is a large generalization, I wonder whether the activation of either appeal and its means of self-expression are not simply the selfsame cry of the truncated modern self from two different social locations.
The matter starts out innocently enough. A statement of truth, through description or prescription, interpretation or explanation, exhortation or command, is greeted by a response: Ί don’t think so; in my experience 
’ A dialogue is begun, but the question is, what follows? Dangers lie on both sides, and clues to a path forward are ingredients in both the assertion of an authoritative opinion and the contrary appeal to experience. Do the two sides harden into just that – two opposed individuals or groups such that no real conversation, no discourse, can go forward? The two tend to feed off one another and keep the opposition going. The more authority becomes authoritarian, the more experience can be invoked in order to escape the imposition of a heteronomous judgement. Likewise, the more the appeal to experience becomes idiosyncratic, the more it too becomes authoritarian; in the same way, the authoritarian appeal to univer...

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